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Abstract

In this paper a generic approach for visible light generation is presented. It is based on sum frequency generation between a semiconductor disk laser and a solid-state laser, where the frequency mixing is achieved within the cavity of the semiconductor disk laser using a single-pass of the solid-state laser light. This exploits the good beam quality and high intra-cavity power present in the semiconductor disk laser to achieve high conversion efficiency. Combining sum frequency mixing and semiconductor disk lasers in this manner allows in principle for generation of any wavelength within the visible spectrum, by appropriate choice of semiconductor material and single-pass laser wavelength.

Figures (7)

Fig. 1. Experimental setup for generation of 593 nm yellow-orange light within a high finesse SDL cavity, including PPKTP at an intra-cavity focus and a single-pass of the output beam of a diode-pumped Nd:YVO4 solid-state laser. HR: high reflector; OC: output coupler; BRF: birefringent filter.

Fig. 4. Characteristics of the 1342 nm laser with intra-cavity 0.3 mm-thick etalon. (a) Output spectra obtained over the tuning range of the laser by means of tilting the etalon, and (b) slope efficiency at 1342.4 nm.

Fig. 5. Measured phase-matching temperature acceptance bandwidth of the PPKTP crystal shown as the generated output power at 593 nm as a function of crystal temperature. Close agreement with the theoretical curve is seen. Also shown is the simultaneous measurement of circulating intra-cavity power at 1064 nm. The data is averaged over 5 points using adjacent-averaging. The underlying decrease in intra-cavity power going from 50 to 24 degrees relates to alignment drift of the system during the course of the measurement.

Fig. 8. Phase-matching diagrams for sum-frequency mixing between wavelengths centered around 1055 nm and 1342 nm for the full tuning ranges available from the lasers used. Dotted lines indicate iso-wavelength curves for the generated light, and blue crosses indicate phase-matching curves for the nonlinear crystal at different temperatures. (a) for PPKTP at three different temperatures, from left to right 18, 43 and 52 °C, (b) for type-I phase-matched LBO, (c) green, red and blue points show measured data for PPKTP at 18, 43 and 52 °C.